Today I have a Guest Post from James Tayo, hope you enjoy his business insights.
I’m here to debunk a myth that you must have heard a lot in the Internet Marketing circles. The money is in the list. Strike that, what it should be is, The money is in your relationship with the list. This is the new paradigm you should be following if you want to make it as a Top Affiliate in Internet Marketing today.
How else would someone make it into the Top 20 Affiliates in a group of people with lists 10 times bigger than his. The world evolves daily and so does the consumer. If you are still using strategies that used to work 2 years ago to promote your affiliate products, you will be crushed by your competition in no time.
A couple of years ago, you were taught to write an eBook, slap it up on a lead capture page and drive traffic and give it up for free
to build a list. Then bombard the list with offer after offer on an auto responder to make money on autopilot. Well I am sorry to say that doesn’t work anymore and so will any get rich quick tactic you may be implementing right now. The effectiveness of these tactics always expire at some point.
The only way to build a sustainable business that will generate an income for you is to be genuinely interested in what your customer wants and offering them quality products that will help their situation. This helps you build a relationship with your list. That has been the fundamentals of doing business for thousands of years and it is not about to change now.
How can you build a relationship with your list?
Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People is packed with tons of wisdom that can be used in almost any facet of life. Here are 4 points I extracted from the book that can help you start building a relationship with your list today.
Become genuinely interested in other people
Do not focus always on the money, the people on your list are humans with feelings too. People these days can smell a pitch from a mile away. If your pitch will address their urgent needs right now, they will buy what you are promoting regardless of how you pitch it. But if you are promoting a product just because the affiliate commissions are great but offer no value, you will put off the people on your list and that will make them less responsive.
Talk in the terms of the other man’s interest
Start seeing your list like a bank account. If you pitch to your list, you make a withdrawal. If you offer valuable content for free, you make a deposit. So now what happens when you withdraw from an account constantly? It becomes overdrawn and your card gets declined. Make sure you give away mind-blowing content to your list so when the time comes to pitch your offer, they gladly take you up on it.
Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely
I hate the word “list” because it makes it look like the people on that list are just statistics. Some people call it subscribers, some call it a tribe or whatever euphemism that may exist out there. The smart marketer knows that each person likes to feel important. You can do this with something as simple as personally replying to every email you receive or twitter reply/retweet you get. If you want to find out how to do this, just follow John Paul’s twitter stream.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves
This related to the previous point of making people feel important. Listening to people not only makes them feel important, it also gives you free, valuable, insider-only research into their minds and what they want right now. The best products are the ones that solve an urgent need or an irrational passion. The only way to find out what these needs and passions are, is to listen to your audience. Send emails asking them to ask you any question and answer them on your blog. It is amazing how much good karma you can generate with those two actions.
The action of asking a question will make them go “Oh my God, he really is interested in me”.
The action of actually answering the question will make them feel important and respect you even more.
The important person on your list that knows you care about them is worth 200 cold people that receive the odd affiliate offer from you every week.
Do you have more questions about this, please ask them in the comments and I will answer them. I am genuinely interested in what you have to say.
(Did you get the practice what you preach angle in that statement? 
)
About Author: James Tayo runs a blog for entrepreneurs at Entrepreneur Blog’r. He shares tips on how you can build a profitable business online by getting customers through email list building and turn them into raving fans.
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June 16th, 2010 at 6:04 am
Hey John Paul, thanks for the opportunity! Had fun writing the post and I look forward to answering any questions your readers might have
June 16th, 2010 at 6:12 am
Anytime James.. is a great post, and happy to help. Yea, I hope the post gets them talking
June 16th, 2010 at 6:22 am
If schools would just make that book mandatory, besides “Rich dad, poor dad”, we would have a lot less trouble in this day and age…
Good article!
June 16th, 2010 at 6:26 am
Aschwin..TY for the comment. I agree.. great book every kid and adult needs to read..
June 16th, 2010 at 6:48 am
That was one of the first books of its kind that I read and I was blown away. even so many years after it is was written, the principles are still timeless..
June 16th, 2010 at 7:24 am
It is new for me. It seems that the relationship which really matters. This article make me thing that the lesser number of list may work better than the massive number of list if the lesser list can build good relationship.
June 16th, 2010 at 7:32 am
Dana, the bigger list is best, BUT it really comes down to how well you can build that relationship with your list and convert them to customers.
So the bigger the list the better you will do even with a small conversion….it is all about building relationships and converting no matter how big or small your list is.
June 16th, 2010 at 8:36 am
Nice tips John. I agree with all of them. It's important to be genuinely interested in other people. I believe that you have to simply give others something, such as a comment or promote their articles, and they will always give something back to you.
June 16th, 2010 at 7:14 am
< strong>Four Things Dale Carnegie Can Teach You To Become A Top Affiliate…
I’m here to debunk a myth that you must have heard a lot in the Internet Marketing circles. The money is in the list. Strike that, what it should be is, The money is in your relationship with the list. This is the new paradigm you should be following i…
June 16th, 2010 at 10:10 am
Julius.. TY for the comment. Yea James made some nice points. I agree with you that when you support others they will easily support you right back.
June 16th, 2010 at 10:36 am
Dana, John is right, it is all about the relationship you have with the people on the list. Robert Cialdini cited reciprocity as one of the triggers of influence. If you give freely, people tend to give back, this can be in the case of taking you up on your affiliate offers
June 16th, 2010 at 10:37 am
Right on point, Julius. as I said in the last comment, reciproocity plays a major part… Givers get
June 16th, 2010 at 10:20 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by John Paul Aguiar, John , Robin Gerhart, Sunali S, Paul Worswick and others. Paul Worswick said: RT @JohnAguiar Four Things Dale Carnegie Can Teach You To Become A Top Affiliate http://bit.ly/cQbYFZ [...]
June 16th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Thanks James – I like the angle you took. There's really a need to humanize a little bit that “list”. I also agree with the emphasis you put on empathy, the need to provide value and the danger of becoming overdrawn.
However, I wonder how you can personally reply to every email/tweets you receive when your list grows longer. It's a great problem that I don't have right now, but I would be interested in hearing from you on this. Any thoughts?
June 16th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
< strong>Story added…
Your story was featured in Featured in MMO Social Network! Here is the link to vote it up and promote it: http://www.mmosocialnetwork.com/Marketing/Four_Things_Dale_Carnegie_Can_Teach_You_To_Become_A_Top_Affiliate…
June 16th, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Michel..TY for the comment.
I think you should be able to answer every @reply and DM on Twitter with no problem. I have 55,000 followers and I answer everyone daily.
As far as your list.. again answering every email is something you need to do.. you never know when that email could lead to a big opportunity, or just offer support to someone that later one can lead to a customer.
The bigger your network grows the more you will need to respond to them.. the more responses the more opportunities.. this is a great problem to have..lol
June 17th, 2010 at 5:34 am
Well spoken from the pro himself
Jphn Paul has been there, done that. I guess you just have to set your mind to it, and then do it
June 17th, 2010 at 5:11 am
< strong>Four Things Dale Carnegie Can Teach You To Become A Top Affiliate …
Today I have a Guest Post from James Tayo, hope you enjoy his business insights.
I’m here to debunk a myth that you must have heard a lot in the Internet Marketing circles. The money is in the……
June 17th, 2010 at 8:50 am
Very nicely written article James, gotta hand it to you!
I spend ages on my emails when getting queries from folks. Not that I get a thousand emails a day but I get plenty enough to keep me busy for a while.
Some folks say that its not good use of time and you should be spending much more time focusing on the actual business and making money. I say “hogwash”! (or should that be “hogwarts” these days??).
Not only do I tend to really enjoy answering folks who have sent me questions (if I did not enjoy this business and it was a chore I'd be doin a 9 – 5!), but I'm actually – in the process (while seriously enjoying myself), building my own brand big and strong.
So I fully agree – put a real big effort into answering emails, answering to Tweets, answering to blog comments at length. Its all gonna pay off big time just down the road!
Thanks guys for sharing this super duper discussion!
Joseph
June 17th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Joseph..TY for the comment. You are right,, the effort you are making now will pay big in the future, people will remember the time you gave them to help them out.
June 17th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Hi James,
It's really nice to see you guest posting here, congrats!
I took a 4 day course from Dale Carnegie, and it was very interesting. We did a lot of role playing and group exercises based around building confidence and team work. I was in a really great group that included plenty of managers and office workers like myself alongside a great bunch of utility workers and construction guys. In one of the exercises, each of us had to get up in front of the group and teach everyone something. I taught yoga and I learned how to properly insulate my home.
It was a blast and I still use some of those strategies including the ones you mentioned here.
Thanks for this!
June 18th, 2010 at 1:59 am
Hi Ileane, thanks… I think this is the first guest post John has featured. I am really honoured.
It is really amazing how classes are still being taught from these fundamental concepts. It's also amazing that you can use them to teach Yoga. so it is not just about sales and marketing techniques
June 18th, 2010 at 2:01 am
There are some things that you just can't delegate, outsource or ignore, John. And I applaud you for knowing that and actually putting that into action. It is not easy, as you must already know.
June 18th, 2010 at 6:02 am
James.. you are the first.
You know you have something real when all these years later you can read that book and put the techniques into action as if the book was just released.
June 23rd, 2010 at 9:48 am
[...] Four Things Dale Carnegie Can Teach You To Become A Top Affiliate … [...]
June 24th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
In every business endeavor, it's a must that we as marketers should listen what our customers say. We should rely on what they want and the trends they are setting.
June 24th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Mouli,, TY for the comment. I agree 100% find what your customer wants, then find a way to offer him that, very simple process.
June 28th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
I am so thankful for this post! I can not believe I haven't found this site sooner. I am relatively new in the market and I am finding it difficult wading through the muck.
June 28th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Glad you stopped by and commented
Hope you visit more.
July 6th, 2010 at 2:38 am
[...] Four Things Dale Carnegie Can Teach You To Become A Top Affiliate | Money Dummy Blog [...]
July 18th, 2010 at 5:58 am
James, such simple and easy to understand principles. I've read Dale Carnegie work and found them to be very inspirational. As you so rightly say, forgetting about the person's feelings and choosing to concentrate on our own desires is a sure route to failure.
Thank you for sharing this.
Regards
Paul
July 19th, 2010 at 1:45 am
Hi Paul, I am glad you liked it. and you understand that we need to focus on the client/customer's needs.. a sure route to success!
July 19th, 2010 at 8:45 am
Hi Paul, I am glad you liked it. and you understand that we need to focus on the client/customer’s needs.. a sure route to success!